Illinois Crushes South Dakota State 56-3, Shines While Rest Of Big Ten Struggles.

If you wanted a convincing win over an inferior opponent, and evidence that the Illini can put teams away when they need to, you got it on Saturday. The South Dakota State Jackrabbits were severely over matched at seemingly every position, and never really threatened the Illini at all. It was exactly how a Big Ten team with plenty of returning starters should handle themselves.

The offense was running soundly, if surprisingly tilted toward the run game. The team rolled up 519 yards in the game, 364 of which came on the ground. Nathan Scheelhaase only attempted eight passes, completing six of them, but gobbling 102 yards from them. Scheelhaase once again kept the ball himself plenty more than I would have liked to see, and when he did he still wants to try and lay hits on defenders rather than step out of bounds or take a slide. Still getting 93 yards and two touchdowns on the ground isn't exactly something I would turn away, and seeing a quarterback stiff arm multiple defenders to the ground is awesome to behold.  I can't complain too loudly if it works, but the season is early and those hits can add up, and I just don't want to see this kid get injured.

One of my other requests was granted though, as we got to see plenty of Riley O'Toole. With the game firmly in hand, the true freshman got a great opportunity to showcase the passing talent we have heard so much about to a real live defense, and he certainly didn't disappoint, completing all nine of his passes for 101 yards and a touchdown (to a tight end no less in Evan Wilson!) O'Toole looked really comfortable out there and it is pretty clear why he jumped Miles Osei in camp, I have to wonder just how good this kid will be by the end of the season, with that much more familiarity with the offense.

With only 16 receptions to go around, A.J Jenkins and Darius Milines stat lines don't look quite as good as last week, as neither player grabbed a TD or broke 100 yards, but they still look to be clearly the best two wide outs on the team and will probably get thrown to much more next week.

The running game clearly was where most of the action was on offense though, and while  Jason Ford got the most carries with 11, the real running star was a throwback to the Rose Bowl season, the Bucket of Hair himself Troy Pollard. Troy has waited patiently in the wings for half a decade now. After having a great showing as a true freshman against Syracuse back in 07, he was injured and took a medical redshirt, while Rashard Mendenhall became the offensive player of the year and a first round NFL pick. The subsequent three seasons saw Troy compete but ultimately be overtaken by some combination of Daniel Dufrene, Jason Ford and of course Mikel Leshoure. With his eight carries against SDSU though, Troy put up a hundred yards and just made the running back competition a little more interesting.

Speaking of running backs, how about Donovonn Young, who got things done in short yardage with a goal line TD and later broke a 41 yard touchdown run. Especially with running backs, we have to remember the defensive competition level, but still. Wow, this guy is fast. 

On defense it was an open and shut case. The Illini allowed only six first downs all day, stopped the Jackrabbits on 10 third downs, and held the entire SDSU offense to under 100 total yards, not to mention the minuscule three points allowed.  And guess who had another INT? Trulon Henry, this time taking it to the house for 6. It looked like all in a days work for the Illini defense, which is all I ever want from this unit.

As good as the Illini looked overall, it might be just as important to understand how well they looked in comparison to other Big Ten teams on Saturday.

Five Big Ten teams lost out of conference games on Saturday, and probably only Penn State can really be forgiven for it, four of those teams are on Illinois' upcoming schedule. I predicted wins against Purdue, Indiana and Minnesota before the season started, and that was before seeing how they fared in their first few games this year. Purdue  lost on the road to a Rice team after having a last second field goal blocked, becoming the first BCS conference team in 22 games to lose to the Owls, this coming a week after late game heroics were needed to beat Middle Tennessee. Indiana compounded its week one loss to Ball State by blowing a late 8 point lead to UVA and losing at home. Minnesota followed up their closer than expected loss to USC in week one with a home loss to New Mexico State by a score of 28-21, which is made even worse by the health scare that head coach Jerry Kill had late in the fourth quarter. Kill has had a history of health problems and was forced to stay home from the NIU Illini game last year. Apparently he is okay, but plenty of people were shaken and worried by his collapse Saturday.

Combine that with the continued absence of Dan Persa at Northwestern (even though the team has performed admirably without him, starting 2-0) the terrible time Ohio State had with Toledo at home, and the 500 total yards Michigan gave up in a victory against Notre Dame, things suddenly look a bit brighter for the Illini. Granted it is early, but right now given the performances we have seen, only Wisconsin looks out of reach right now for the Illini, and the Illini could rack up a surprising number of wins this season. Get greedy folks.